Easter Weekend

Next to Christmas, I think Easter is my favorite holiday. First of all, what a wonderful opportunity we have to celebrate Christ's resurrection! I love the fact that I can be with my family forever because of it. I also love everything else about Easter. I love the Easter candy like Reeses peanut butter eggs and jellybeans. I love coloring eggs. I love hunting for eggs and baskets. I love getting new church clothes. And I just love springtime. It's my favorite time of year. And as with every holiday, it's so much fun with kids.
We started off the weekend with some egg coloring. Madeleine discovered the wonder of drawing on the egg with a white crayon and then watching the scribbles appear after coloring the egg. But, I think we were more amazed then she was. She just wanted to color another egg. We also made each of us an egg with our name on it.

We then spent time with my family Saturday participating in a couple Easter egg hunts. Madeleine totally knew what was going on this year. She was the first one out the door and was quick to pick up eggs. She got a good haul. She is also good at opening the plastic eggs and started eating the candy as fast as she picked up the eggs. Sunday, our girls looked beautiful in their new church dresses. Unfortunately it was nearly impossible to get a good picture of the two of them. As soon as Madeleine would give a good smile she would turn her head and be moving everywhere. She has no patience to sit still. And I must brag about the girls' bows. I made them!! I'm so proud of how they turned out. They went great with their dresses.Madeleine also enjoyed hunting for her basket. She thought it was pretty silly that the Easter Bunny would hide her basket. She even got to hunt for Tori’s basket. Tori loved her basket and went straight for the Reeses eggs. That's my girl! We ended our festivities at the Drapers where Madeleine hunted for more candy with her ancient 27 and 22 year old uncles.

Hope you all had good Easter too! Let’s hope springtime actually gets here soon.

Our Finished Family Room

Finally!! What you have all been waiting for! Pictures of our finished basement family room!!! Yea!!! We have acutally been enjoying the room since the beginning of the month. But we've been enjoying it so much that we haven't taken a moment to share our fine work with all of you. We actually have just a few touch-ups to do, but you would never know what they were unless we pointed them out. We also need to get some window treatments and hopefully that will be happening soon. But we love the extra room and are amazed that we did it ourselves.
Isn't the carpet amazing!?! I love it and just wish it were through the entire house. It's so thick and soft and lush. You don't even need a pillow when laying in it. And walking barefoot on it is like walking barefoot along a beach. Your toes just sink right in. Ahhhhhh, it's great!

Here are some before pictures.

Here are the after! And "phew" the couch fit back in.

If any of you would like to come and enjoy this room in person, give us a call! We would love to show off our handiwork even further.

We're #1!

OK, still no pictures of the finished basement, but don't worry. We just have the tiniest amount of touch-up painting to do, and then we see if we can get our couch to fit back through the new doors. If not, it's going to have to be cut into a million pieces and re-assembled on the other side. OK, just kidding, we'll probably just use our tax return for new furniture that does fit, which wouldn't be the end of the world.

Anyway, for today, I wanted to take a page from our friends Amy and Dave and link to a website where you can spend entirely too much time, and which will get any number of songs stuck in your head. I'm talking about the following:

www.joshhosler.biz/NumberOneInHistory/SelectMonth.htm

(And, no, I don't know how to do the linky thing where you go "Click Here!" and it automatically links to the site you want without having to spell it out in its entirety. So deal with it. I am, among many other things, severely technologically impaired.)

Anyway, this site will tell you what the #1 song was on any day of any year. It's most fun to see what was hot the day you were born, but the site suggests you look up the #1 on the day you graduated, the day you were married, and most disturbingly, the day you were conceived. ("You Don't Bring Me Flowers" by Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond for me. Eww.)

Anyway, here are the #1 songs on our dates of birth for the members of our family. What are yours?

Matt: "My Sharona" by The Knack
Jenny: "Bette Davis Eyes" by Kim Carnes
Madeleine: "Run It" by Chris Brown
Tori: "Crank That (Soulja Boy)" by Soulja Boy

After clicking around the site for a while, I realize (like our pal Amy) that I know almost 100% of the #1's from the 90's, and a lot from the 80's, but for the 00's I'm averaging about 50%. I think that means I used to be cool in the 90's, but now I am just old. In fact, I have no idea what Madeleine's song is, and all I really know about Tori's is that there is some sort of dance craze associated with it. I know. I am lame. But I am really excited to be the old, lame Dad that embarrasses the crap out of his teenage daughters! That is so exciting to me. It's part of the circle of life, as my Dad did the same to me, and I'm sure his Dad did the same to him. "It's the CIRCLE of LIIIFFE! And it moves us ALL!!!"

See, I told you that you'd get songs stuck in your head!